Editor's note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.
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Note: All characters in this story are 18 years of age or older
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My mom is like the world's worst mom. I hate her. I can't stand her. We fight all the time.
I started asking about my dad to annoy her. My dad was like this big dark mystery. My birth certificate is blank in the spot where it says, "father."
Then I started asking her about him in front of my stepdad just to make it a hundred times worse. I told her that I was old enough -- I had just turned 18 -- and wanted to meet him.
It just drove her nuts, which is exactly what I wanted to do.
But you know, I had had these very elaborate fantasies about him too that had started back when I was eight years old, like that he was fabulously rich and handsome and led an exciting life, sort of both Indiana Jones and James Bond or a brain surgeon who was also a secret crime fighter. I imagined that he wasn't part of my life only because she'd kept me secret from him.
I had fantasies about him coming and taking me away. We'd fly around the world treasure hunting and spying, or I'd become a doctor, but not by going to school -- since I hate school -- but instead by being his apprentice who was also his secret crime fighting partner, like Batman and Batgirl.
It was all so silly and childish that I'm blushing as I write this down. Whenever I read comic books or watched adventure or suspense movies I imagined that the main character, the hero, was my real father.
Well, she started to tell me a little, but I didn't believe her. She said that my dad raped her and that she didn't know who he was. I just didn't believe her, so I started really embarrassing her in front of my stepdad and especially the people from our church.
Finally she told me what she said was the truth as she was crying the whole time. She even drove me over to his house while she told me.
We're Jehovah's Witnesses. She told me that when she was only a little older than me she and a woman from our church were going door to door handing out Watchtower and Awake! magazines. They went to this big creepy old house. The lawn wasn't mowed. The paint was chipping and almost all worn off the house. There were old cars in the yard with grass growing halfway up the wheels. There was this big nasty looking dog chained to a huge tree out front, barking and barking. A few of the windows were broken.
In our church, we believe that Jehovah God looks out for people doing witness work, that when we're going door to door spreading the Word, we're in Jehovah God's special care. So bold as day mom and her companion went up to the house and knocked on the front door.
This skinny old lady opens the door. They offer her the Watchtower and bring out their Bible and start talking about scripture and witnessing the Word. The old lady invites them in and they sit at her table. There are flies buzzing around the kitchen too. Several mangy-looking cats are sitting in the sun in the shade-less windows. They can smell cat pee too and fleas jump on their legs while they sit talking to the old lady. There are piles of yellow newspapers, and the table has dirty dishes and even some moldy and rotting food on it. The old lady's matchstick legs are all hairy, and she has no teeth and this white, ghostly mustache. They are talking and the old lady moves and my mom can see right up her old threadbare housecoat, and she sees the old lady's hairy "hoo-hoo," which is my mom's word for a woman's vulva.
My mom's thinking that this is like the Addam's Family without any of the funny stuff.
Well, this guy comes in. The old lady says it's her grandson. He's in dirty jeans and a grimy, grease-stained t-shirt with yellow sweat-stains in his t-shirt's armpits. His feet are bare and dirty. He hasn't shaved. He's got a tattoo of a single rolling dice on the back of each hand. He's got a broken stump of a tooth right in the front, but he has the beautiful blue eyes of an angel.
Well, he starts talking to my mom, listening to her talk about the Bible and Jehovah God and the Watchtower magazine. My mom's companion is still talking to the old woman.
He says, "Let's go and talk on the porch." It's outside, but it's out back, where no one can see from the street or anything. My mom thinks Jehovah God is watching over her and that if anything happens she'll be martyred.
My mom said that he raped her out on the porch.
At first she wouldn't tell me any more, but then she said that she was wearing her long skirt and that the guy was very strong and that he held her down and stuck his hand up her skirt and then pulled her skirt up and ripped her panties and raped her, raped her for about forty minutes, and that she had been a virgin, but that he raped right out in the open with another big nasty dog on a chain close nearby howling and barking and straining on his chain the whole time.
She said that she was so ashamed that she didn't tell anyone, that she went on witnessing the Word another couple hours after that with her virgin blood and her rapist seed oozing out on her torn panties and dripping down her thighs.
Well, I don't believe any of it, but my mom drives me over and shows me the house, a house that looks just like she described.
I still don't believe it. I go to get out of the car, saying I'm going to ask them myself, but my mom cries and holds my arm and won't let me out. But I'm calling her a liar, telling her that I don't believe any of it, that she just let some boy slip one past the goalie a few times, or maybe let a whole bunch of boys do it hundreds of times. She gets so angry at me that she pushes me out of the car and drives off, shouting, "Go talk to your father, get yourself raped by these hillbillies, see if I care!"
We live in the city, and I don't think I've ever heard my mom call anyone, "hillbillies," before.
Well, I'm so convinced that she was lying that I go and knock on the door. I'm so sure of myself that I don't even care when a big mean-looking dog on a chain comes from behind the tree and starts barking, confirming part of my mother's story. We all took the Watchtower door to door, we all had several weird or funny stories about things we'd seen when we did it. Older witnesses had dozens or even hundreds of that kind of story.
I knock on the door, but nothing happens. I knock louder, and nothing happens. I take my shoe off and use it to knock really loud. A girl about my age, or probably just a little older, answers the door. She's got freckles and blond hair and hazel eyes. She smiles and her teeth are all straight. She's more than just cute: she's beautiful.
I'm not sure what to say, so I ask if a man lives there with dice tattoos on the back of his hands.
She doesn't really answer my question but instead invites me into the kitchen. There are three men old men playing cards at the table. Two of the burners on the stove are running with no pans or anything else on them ---- for heat I guess ---- and it's a little too warm in the kitchen. None of the old men have dice on the backs of their hand. I wonder why they didn't answer the door since they are so close they must've heard me knock.
I was thinking it weird to have such a big house with a kitchen so close to the front.
She says, "Follow me. You can talk to my uncle."